


Resonance

by JadedQuill



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mind-fuckery, Peter-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-01
Updated: 2008-12-01
Packaged: 2018-11-06 13:03:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedQuill/pseuds/JadedQuill
Summary: Peter tries to pull himself back together, but he's starting to realize that there's more to being an Empath than he first thought.





	Resonance

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics from Down With the Sickness by Disturbed.
> 
> Part of [](http://capn-mactastic.livejournal.com/profile)[**capn_mactastic**](http://capn-mactastic.livejournal.com/)'s Gabriel/Peter/Sylar [Advent Calendar](http://capn-mactastic.livejournal.com/90765.html).

_Drowning deep in my sea of loathing_  
Broken your servant I kneel  
It seems what’s left of my human side  
Is slowly changing, in me 

\---

One way or another, every one of Issac’s paintings came true. First impressions and guesses at interpretations were often wrong, flawed, but in the end what was laid out in paint became reality. Even the bomb still happened. Peter exploded in relative safety, far over New York, but he still exploded.

For a while Peter wonders if perhaps the destruction is still destined to occur, still imminent. True, the paintings of the bomb exploding can be said to have come about, but the painting of the aftermath, the destruction never did.

Peter finds out through Bennet that there was a painting of his trip to the future. It was one of a series of eight that all came to pass in order, ending in Noah Bennet’s temporary death. Peter thinks of this and wonders if the painting of the aftermath of the bomb was supposed to be what Hiro and Ando saw when they traveled to the future. He hopes so.

\---

Sometimes Peter wonders if there’s more to being an Empath than absorbing the abilities of others like the proverbial sponge. Claude had seemed so annoyed to cross paths with another Empath. Peter wishes he could ask Claude about these (this?) other Empaths (Empath?) but Claude doesn’t want to be found. Even Peter can’t track down the invisible man.

He has asked Noah Bennet about it, but Bennet has always maintained that Peter and Sylar are unique in their capacity to use multiple abilities. Bennet’s mind is hard to read. He thinks in a dozen different languages and is more than capable of keeping his thoughts hidden. It frustrates Peter to no end, but if Noah is lying to him there’s nothing he can do about it. He supposes the man must have his reasons. Or maybe he’s telling what he believes to be the truth. Maybe Claude was higher ranking, knew things that Noah didn’t.

\---

Some days Peter scares himself.

Some days he wakes up with nightmares and struggles to remember who he is.

They’re not prophetic nightmares. They’re nothing like his visions of exploding. Instead they’re remembrances of the past.

He dreams about letting his powers get away from him in Ireland, of nearly choking Ricky’s traitorous friend to death. He’d like to think that it was done out of confusion, something to do with his lack of memories, but he knows better. He knows that it wasn’t a one time deal. He remembers -dreams about- doing the same to Hiro. Hiro! If Parkman and Nathan hadn’t shown up when they did… Peter doesn’t like to think about that. His nightmares do more than enough of that for him.

Some nights he dreams about Adam. About how Adam used him, convinced him they were saving the world when they were actually going to destroy it. Peter dreams of the lies. He dreams of the vial hitting the ground and shattering into a thousand pieces. He dreams of the desolate future he very nearly brought about. He dreams of Caitlin, screaming his name, crying out for help. He sees her piled among the dead, or lost in a void of nothingness, trapped in a future that no longer exists.

It’s so often now that he wakes from his dreams in tears.

\---

Now that Issac’s gone, it’s up to Peter to paint the future. He might like to avoid it, except when it bursts out of him seemingly of its own will, but he knows that somewhere out there Sylar is using that same ability and twisting it to his own needs. It’s that knowledge that compels him to foretell the future in pencil, ink and paint.

He wonders if Sylar knows that the images in the paintings can’t be changed. Even seeing them only means that you can tweak the circumstances, maybe delay things, but they’ll always happen eventually. Peter wonders what Sylar has seen, and if maybe that’s why no one has turned up dead in a while. Or maybe Sylar has other plans, no one knows.

Peter wants to see what Sylar has drawn though, because his own foretellings are starting to frighten him more than his nightmares. More and more there are images of dark and shadowed men doing horrible things. Bodies contorted into agony, buildings destroyed, landscapes blazing with fire, death and destruction follow in their wake. At first he was so sure that they were all Sylar, but now he doesn’t know anymore. His last painting had two men, so similar and yet different. He can tell them apart now, and he knows that his most horrific paintings contain both. He’s sure that one is Sylar, the severed skulls attest to that. The other is an enigma, and one he tries hard not to dwell on, for fear he’ll discover something he doesn’t want to learn.

\---

Peter has begun to suspect that he absorbs more than just abilities.

He can’t go back to his job as a nurse, as much as he sometimes might want to. The short time he tried was agony. He came out of the experience so depressed that he slept for nearly a week. It was his first hint, but not the last.

He can’t stand to be around his mother anymore.

At first he thought it was simply the knowledge that she had wanted him to explode, that she had tried to stop Nathan from helping him, but being around her feels like torment: guilt and anger and despair. He didn’t notice at first, his guilt over Adam and the virus, his own agony, brings enough of those feelings to the surface of his psyche on their own, but being around her makes it worse and now he wonders at the truth. Does she hide it under a strong façade, while the skeletons in her closet eat away at her?

\---

They still haven’t discovered who shot Nathan.

Without him, Peter feels lost, drifting through life without an anchor.

\---

Wandering the city brings him the most peace, but also holds the most disturbing of moments.

He wonders why it doesn’t cripple him, all those people, all those emotions, and he wonders if maybe he’s wrong and it’s all in his head. Mohinder tells him it could simply be that his receptors shut down rather than go into overload, but he can’t offer any concrete answers. Peter would like to work with Mohinder, to figure this out with him, but Mohinder is off-putting to be around these days too.

So Peter wanders.

The crowds are nice. He can be around people without feeling overwhelmed.

Every now and then he picks up a thought - though he’s gotten better at controlling that ability - or a wave of emotion that threatens to crush him under its weight. They pass quickly, though, and he can never figure out who they came from.

\---

As time passes, the trips through the crowded streets become less and less enjoyable. Thoughts he picks up inspire contempt.

He wonders if he’ll live forever, like Adam, and he feels detached from the rest of the world. More evolved, special, somehow above them. These odd feelings appear sporadically and fade before the day is out, but parts of them cling to his brain and refuse to let go.

Sometimes these feelings of superiority get overwhelmingly strong and he will teleport to some uninhabited wilderness just to escape them. That he could feel such contempt for humanity frightens him to his very core. He never wanted to be a god. He just wanted to be a hero.

\---

Two months pass in a blur and Peter feels scattered.

He knows Sylar is killing again. He knows that some of his paintings have started to come true. He just can’t stop it. His paintings are vague, for all that they disturb him. Even if he could track Sylar down, what would be the point? How could he even think at playing the hero when he still can’t control his own abilities? Would being in the same room as Sylar start another overload? Could he even beat Sylar in a fight?

He desperately needs someone to comfort him, to give him faith in himself again. He needs someone to hold him and tell him that everything will be alright. He needs his confidence back, but he’s afraid that it’s been shattered forever.

He misses Nathan more than he could have thought possible.

He even tries to reach out to Mohinder once more, but all he finds is an empty apartment.

\---

Peter returns to his home one night to find an unpleasant surprise. There is no sign of forced entry, nor any disturbance or damage, just something that wasn’t there before: paint on canvas in a hand that isn’t his. He whirls around, expecting to find the artist lurking behind him, waiting to strike, but he is alone.

The style is harsh and composed of jagged lines, but the subject is much clearer than that of his own art and as he works it out he has to stifle a gasp. A woman’s body, lying on the ground like a rag doll tossed aside, her face frozen in a moment of agony. Peter doesn’t want it to be who he thinks it is, but there is no denying the other figure in the painting. He recognized himself in Issac’s paintings on an almost instinctual level, and Sylar’s work is no different. The scene is his old home, the woman his mother, and the dark shadow in the corner that oozes menace can only be the artist himself.

Leaving this here, it is a warning and a challenge all wrapped in one. Sylar has his next target, and he wants Peter to know it. Peter doesn’t think he can win in a fight, especially if this is a trap; but, despite her flaws, Angela Petrelli doesn’t deserve to die like this. She’s still his mother.

He has to fix it.

\---

He doesn’t even know how it happened. She took one look at him and she knew – she _knew_ – how it would end.

He remembers demanding questions being shouted. He remembers feeling betrayed, angry. He remembers an insatiable desire to lash out, to prove her wrong, to show her he wasn’t a failure.

He doesn’t remember how it got to this. Angela Petrelli, his own mother, a twisted broken heap of flesh and bone. She’s dead, just like in the painting, and it’s his fault.

He can’t think, he can’t move, he can’t breathe.

“You know, I wasn’t entirely sure it would work.” Sylar’s voice slips in through the cracks, rushing to fill the void in his head, his heart, his soul. He circles around from behind, surveying Peter’s handiwork with an approving eye.

Somewhere deep inside, Peter knows what he should do, what he would have done, what he had done six months ago. Now it seems so far away, so hard to grasp. All he can do is to stare at the horror he inflicted on his own flesh and blood.

Peter is not sure when Sylar knelt down beside him, but his stupor is broken by strong fingers hooking around his jaw, forcing him to stare into the other’s eyes. He wants to flinch away from that gaze, eyes that pick him apart and lay his soul bare, but movement is impossible.

“Peter the sponge, so out of control.”

Peter’s doesn’t know what it is in this moment, those words, those eyes, but something clicks into place, falls together with alarming clarity.

“How long have you been following me?” The words are soft, barely escaping his mouth, but the curl of Sylar’s lips, into the most wicked grin Peter has ever seen, tells him that they have been heard nonetheless.

Sylar leans forward, and Peter’s flinch backwards meets an invisible resistance, holding him still, trapping him in place. Sylar’s lips meet his, turning an expression of love and affection into one of possession, control and humiliation. Then it shifts, changes once more, and Peter feels something within himself crumble and break away. There is a loneliness burning so deeply within his soul.

He is lost, forsaken.

The hand gripping his neck is harsh, the hold so strong it might bruise a lesser man, but he can take it. He can, and he will, because what else is left for him in this world?

Nothing, no one.

_Just enough to break you._

An overheard thought, an answer ignored, because he can’t do this alone, and what other choice does he have? He’s been drifting, drifting, drifting. Now _purpose_ , _destiny_ they throb along with his heart.

He is consumed.

\--

_Looking at my own reflection_  
When suddenly it changes  
Violently it changes  
Oh no, there’s no turning back now  
You’ve woken up the demon in me


End file.
